Only 32.5% of enterprises have successfully scaled AI factory deployments; a new EMA white paper highlights network orchestration as the missing foundation.
FusionLayer, the global leader in automated network orchestration for AI-driven infrastructure, announced the release of a new independent research report conducted by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA): “The IP Connectivity Paradox: Unlocking the AI Factory at Scale.” The study highlights a significant gap between enterprise investment in AI and their ability to operationalize AI factories at a production scale.
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Based on survey responses from over 200 IT and security leaders across North America and Europe, the research finds that while AI workloads are the leading strategic driver of edge computing (49.2%), only 32.5% of organizations have implemented AI factories at scale. This gap stems from growing infrastructure complexity, fragmented operational models, and the absence of an automated, secure connectivity foundation.
Enterprises Struggle to Operationalize AI Factories
According to EMA’s findings, organizations identify skills shortages (50.8%), deployment complexity (49.7%), and cost barriers (48.2%) as the main obstacles to scaled AI adoption. Additionally, despite prioritizing security—with 82.9% viewing it as the key benefit of edge computing—enterprises are limited by legacy, manual networking methods that cannot keep up with large‑scale distributed systems.
“AI is no longer an emerging trend—it is a production imperative,” said Ken Buckler, Research Director at EMA. “But enterprises cannot scale AI factories unless they first modernize the underlying IP connectivity layer. Our research shows that network orchestration, automation, and zero-touch provisioning are no longer optional—they are required for deployment success.”
FusionLayer Xverse: Solving the IP Connectivity Paradox
The white paper describes FusionLayer’s Xverse platform as a next-generation orchestration layer designed to remove structural deployment bottlenecks. Xverse offers:
- Secure zero-touch provisioning to onboard thousands of devices—such as DPUs—within minutes.
- A centralized network source of truth that ensures consistent policy enforcement across hybrid environments.
- Cloud-native, hardware-agnostic automation supporting a wide range of infrastructures, from legacy servers to NVIDIA BlueField DPUs.
- Real-time, AI-powered service deployment transforms the network into an intelligent, self-orchestrating foundation.
“As enterprises shift toward decentralized, AI-driven architectures, they are discovering that traditional network tooling cannot support the velocity and scale required,” said Juha Holkkola, CEO of FusionLayer. “Xverse was engineered precisely for this moment. It delivers the automated connectivity fabric needed to unlock AI factories at production scale—securely, rapidly, and without complexity.”
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